LEDs

Very recently, I took few days off my work and went to some very exotic places in HP. One of my colleagues, Kartik Rajan, also joined me. Though, we had planned a long 7 days trip, for various reasons, our trip got reduced to only 4 days.

Kartik always wanted to go to Spiti (pronounced as “piti”) Valley, and so we planned to first go to Kaza, which is the main town in Spiti Valley. Though, after inquiry, we found out that it takes almost 16 hours to reach there. Considering the long journey, we dropped the plan and instead decided to go to Lahaul Valley.

We looked at the map again and found out that the town of Keylong, in Lahaul Valley, is just 115 km from Manali. So, we decided to go there. We started from Ghumarwin, and first went to Ghagas, a town on the main road from Bilaspur to Mandi. We hopped in to a Manali bound bus but got down at Bhuntar which is few kilometers before Kullu. From here, we took another bus to go to Kasol. Kartik has heard from one of his friends that it is a very scenic place, famous for trekking. While we both didn’t want to do trekking on this trip, we still went to check out the place.

At Bhuntar, we got into a private bus which was packed, and by the time it started, it was overflowing. People were perched on top of the bus also. When bus passed through Bhuntar town, few foreigners boarded the bus but on the top. I was surprised to see that they were at ease with the fact that they were traveling on the roof top of the bus.

The bus crossed the bridge on river Beas and very soon, it started going up hill. As usual, the roads were in zigzag form with hair-pin bends etc and a positive gradient. The unusual part was the speed and the way with which the bus driver was driving. He seemed to be playing with the steering wheel. There were times, when bus wheels were just six inches away from the edge and you could see the mighty-roaring River Parbati (one of the main tributaries of River Beas) flowing at a few hundred feet just below you. Incidentally, I had a window seat and at times, I wondered what would happen to us if the bus tumbles down. The only consoling factor during this thought was the presence of lots of trees on the steep slope. Overall, the journey was wonderful.

When we reached Kasol town, to our amazement, we could see mostly foreigners around. In fact, most of the tourists out there were non-Indians. As we were trying to find out a hotel room for ourselves, I witnessed sign boards and posters in some foreign language. Kartik told me that the language is Hebrew. It seems that the place is very famous with Jew tourists and they come and stay in Kasol for good 6 months or so.

Finally, we got ourselves a room, and we dumped our luggage and immediately went out for a walk. Within 2 min, we were walking on the road towards Manikaran. The sight was awesome. There are towering mountains on both sides with a mighty river flowing in the middle and a road running parallel to the river. It was just mesmerizing. We both were totally awestruck. We took some photographs and took a long winding path to go to the river bank. We also found a wonderful camping site with a restaurant just next to the river. After almost around couple of hours we returned back, had dinner at a restaurant and then retired into our room.

Next morning, we decided to walk to Manikaran, which is just 4 km from Kasol. The morning was so beautiful that I am short of words to explain it. The sun was out but was behind the mountain, which is on the side of the road. The sunlight was trying to sneak in between the gap of two mountains. River Parbati was its usual self – full of water and roaring. The birds were chirping and there were scattered white clouds at the peak of mountains. As we stopped by at a small dhaba (road-side restaurant) to have breakfast, I observed that trees had lot of dew drops on their leaves. Thousands of tiny droplets on the edges of thin, slender and pointed leaves started glowing like LEDs as soon as the sun-light managed to sneak in and fell on the trees. Very soon, they started emitting out different colours – shades of blue, red and orange!!! Kartik was busy taking photographs and I was busy locating different colours. Before this, I had only heard about the magical effects of early-morning dew-drops, but this was the first time, I witnessed it. For around half hour, I was totally lost. In whichever direction I turned my head there were Light Emitting Dew-drops on tree leaves, glowing in different colours.

Next to us, River Parbati was flowing with all its might, in the middle of two mountains, between the gaps of which, the sun was shining. The whole scene was very mystical. We both took our own sweet time to soak in the whole environment around us. We sat down at the dhaba for quite a while, before finishing our breakfast and moving on to Manikaran. I knew that this would go down as the best experience of the whole trip. At the end of the trip, I can firmly say - I was right.

What about people?

Sometime back, I attended a session at IIT Delhi, which was one of the many reach-out sessions to invite IIT alumni to a major Pan-IIT session, to be held in IIT, Mumbai in December 2006. Lot of luminaries attended this session including Mr. Rajat Gupta of McKinsey fame. This was the first time that I attended any IIT alumni session.

During the session, I learnt that the objective of Pan-IIT is to bring the alumni of various IITs together to “transform the face of the country by involving common man”. Also, it was brought to my notice that a commonly perceived problem in the alumni members is that there is more talk than the action. Pan-IIT has tried to address this problem by starting some specific projects. They contacted a big chunk of alumnus and asked them the kind of projects they would like to participate in. During this session, the result of this finding was shared with the audience. I was amazed to see it – top slot was occupied by “creating new technology”. More than this, I was shocked to find “enabling common people” occupying last spot.

I am not sure what alumni members were thinking when they responded, but in my opinion, they are so far removed from the reality. Even though the technology revolution has definitely brought lot of ForEx and up-lifted the living standard of people in urban clusters, it is more or less useless for rural areas, which still suffer from the lack of basic amenities – clean drinking water, sanitation, electric supply, basic health care, approachable roads etc. The only technology revolution which has really affected the rural areas is telecom - mobile phones have penetrated quite deeply.

It seems that we always treat technology as a panacea for everything. It is amazing to see how easily we overlook the power of people despite the fact that we are a democratic country. If my memory is correct the mantra is - of the people, by the people, for the people - isn’t it? Or is it the problem of plenty? Many would say so. But this also doesn’t sound right – haven’t we realized that the much touted IT revolution happened only because we have so many educated, trained and English speaking people? Have we still not realized that the same population, who we always consider the bane of the country, has not only saved us from a serious financial crisis but also enabled us to go up to the next rung in the ladder of economic-independence?

I find it funny that people, especially techies, think technology is superior to human beings. In my opinion, it is just a tool, at the most, an enabler. The mere fact that technology can be misused for destructive purposes should tell people that it is a tool. It is the people who decide where to use what technology for what purposes. Therefore, I was very disappointed to see that “enabling common people” was put in the last spot, whereas, in my opinion it is the single most important thing which everyone should focus on. Once people are enabled, they, themselves, will find out what is the suitable technology for them, keeping in mind their environment, constraints and, obviously, requirements.

Wonder if IITians would realize it soon enough to focus their energies at the right place.

Living with Fear

Current times are definitely “interesting”. Before finalizing the word “interesting”, I scratched my head, for some time, at the risk of losing more hair, to think of a better word to describe these events, but of no avail. Actually, I gave up quickly because I realized there is no need for me to decide whether these events are good or bad.

I am talking about the current atmosphere of terror, prevailing everywhere now-a-days. You pick up any newspaper and you will find half of it filled with terror stories across the world. Very recently, it has reached such proportions that one can’t even carry a drinking water bottle inside a commercial plane without thorough screening!!! Fear reigns supreme everywhere, whether it is Mumbai, Delhi, UP, Nepal, Sri Lanka, West Asian region, UK or US.

This is exactly what bothers me. Over the decades, we all have become used to of mad-rush-all-the-time kind of lifestyle. This has made all of us totally indifferent (yes apathetic) to our eco-system, because we are so focused on what we are doing. Our thinking is that I should focus on my work and let others focus on others’ work. Strict division of labour – the very corner-stone of a market based economy (a.k.a. capitalism). While it may have done wonders to the economy and the market, and might have generated lot of wealth and blah, blah, blah, I don’t think it has done any good to the social system, in which we all live and breathe. This mad rush has taken us far apart from each other resulting in rapidly declining respect and sympathy for each other. We tend to forget that we don’t live in an isolated cocoon, rather we are very much part of a system which has other constituents as well. The health of this multi-constituent system does not depend on the health of just one person, but of the collective. So, if we want to be healthy, we need the system to be healthy, which requires us to ensure that the collective is healthy. When it doesn’t happen, we end up living in eternal fear of catching a deadly infection, and taking all kind of precautions to protect ourselves.

The current events are nothing but a manifestation of our ever-growing apathy and indifference to our eco-system, due to which, certain portions of the collective got neglected and caught the infection of terrorism. If you believe in the age-old adage – what goes around comes around, it seems that the infection is coming back to bite us only. Right now, there is no alternative but to look for cure. But, once the system is cured (if it does happen), then what? Do we allow the system to go through the same deadly cycle of catching infection and then applying another cure? We all know that over a period of time, the bacteria becomes resistant to cures, so won’t it be wise to follow a wiser approach – prevention is better than cure?

Obviously, everything comes at a cost, and, in this case, the cost of ensuring that the system remains infection-free would, probably, be restricted individual growth. It is very obvious because it requires considerable time and effort to ensure that all the constituents of the system are in good health. It would demand lot of patience, hard work and personal sacrifice and in reuturn we would avoid living with fear.

Are we up for the game?